


They Call It Noclip

by NervousAsexual



Category: Half-Life
Genre: Anxiety, Gen, cheats enabled, just a day in the life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 22:37:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8508205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: After Dr. Freeman abandons his band of rebels to go who knows where, leaving them all under pressure and dangerously under-supplied, Barney attempts to formulate a plan.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, all. It's election day. Are you nervous? I'm nervous. Have this thing I wrote.

Pinned down in an abandoned warehouse by the suppression device, Barney waited alone with only two rebels, one medic, and a civilian armed with a crowbar and a pocket full of rocks. Gordon Freeman had hours ago walked through the wall and disappeared.

"He's not coming back, is he?" asked the medic.

"Don't talk to me," said Barney. "Not a word."

"I've seen this before," said the civilian. "They call it noclip. He's probably halfway to Nova Prospket."

"Who the heck would escape City 17 just to run to NP?" demanded the medic. "Your theory is just not plausible."

"Assuming I meant he had escaped was your first mistake, and thus your logic is flawed," returned the civilian, and they engaged in a vicious slap battle.

It had been a terrible day, Barney reflected, staring blankly out the window as the suppression device blasted two hapless metrocops into negative space. He woke up with a crick in his neck, ate spoiled headcrab for breakfast (it was so damn hard to tell when it turned), threw up on his rifle, threw up on Gordon, and now here he was, face pressed against the window. He wished he were home in bed.

(Such as it was. Home alternated nights between a smelly barracks with too many people in too few beds and a dirty mattress in Kleiner's lab with a bucket over his head to keep the headhumper away.)

His head felt like it was stuffed with wool, and he propped it up against the window. The nice cool window. Good window.

A rebel abruptly threw herself down beside him.

"Hi, how ya doing?" she asked.

Barney opened one eye and stared at her intently. It was as if she were trying to communicate with him.

"I been doing some figuring," continued the rebel. "There's only a handful of us. Dr. Freeman is probably going to be missing for another eight years. We got no food, no water, and you look like you went ten rounds with a hunter. We've got, like, three guns, no ammo..."

"I have a crowbar," piped in the civilian. The medic had him in a headlock, pinned against the stairs.

"What I'm trying to say," the rebel said, raising her voice, "is that we are up the barnacle tongue without a crowbar."

"We have a crowbar," the civilian gasped. "Right here."

Barney grunted in agreement.

The rebel stood quietly.

"Did... did you want to suggest something?"

She shook her head. "I just thought you out to know. About the barnacle tongue and all."

"You don't have any suggestions as to what to do?"

The rebel shrugged.

"But you thought giving voice to all our troubles would... what? Make me feel better?"

"Can't say that I thought that far ahead."

Barney nodded and nodded. His head felt like it would detach, would just roll across the floor and keep nodding forever. He staggered to his feet and picked up his rifle.

"Where're you going, Calhoun?" asked the medic. The civilian seemed to have been choked out.

"Don't know," said Barney. "Maybe Nova Prospect."

And he teleported through the wall and was gone.


End file.
